Hilbert-Liebmann theorem

cosmos 24th June 2017 at 8:14pm

video. If a Surface SS is compact and connected, if the Gaussian curvature KK is a constant. Then, SS is a Sphere!

In fact because of compactness, constant KK, implies that K>0K>0. First, because any compact surface has an Elliptic point (see argument using Height function, and existance of global maximum and minimum for Compact spaces), K0K\geq 0. Furthermore, it cannot be 00 everywhere because that would imply that every point belongs to some path along which the normal is constant (following locally the Principal direction with eigenvalue 00, necessary for K=0K=0). Note that compactness, which implies existence of maximum and minimum in particular for the Height function, then implies the existence of a point in the surface with any normal vector. Hmm.. However, we can parametrized the surface by following the curves with constant normal vector, and a curve that crosses all of them. This doesn't leave enough space for all normal vectors to be present in the surface.. Not very formal, but I think it works.

K>0K>0 implies the Mean curvature HH is non-0, then the rest of the argument follows as in Jellet-Liebmann theorem